The Anatomy of Power

An exploration of the way the African body has been analyzed in western thought from the Renaissance to the present. Using Foucaultian theory, this work examines European constructions of the African body and shows how, in the service of white power, these have been perverse. ‘It is difficult to identify a single example of a colonial or post-colonial society in which the public health official, the primary health care nurse, the hospital doctor, the psychiatrist, and many other representatives of the socio-medical sciences are not present. It is equally impossible to identify any setting where the population has no knowledge of how to act and react in the ritual of the medical examination by doctor, inspection by the aid worker, interrogation by the anthropologist, or enumeration by the census officer,‘ writes Alex Butchart. Using Foucault‘s thinking on the relationship between power and knowledge, the author of this extraordinary book analyzes the ways in which the body of ‘The African‘ has itself been analyzed in western thought from the Renaissance to the present. The book not only provides a critical edge to debates around colonialism and African identity, it is also an invaluable new reservoir of source materials for scholars with a passion for knowing the body politic and its anatomy of power.